Historical atlases came into being in the eighteenth century. This article discusses the view of history in these early works, and especially their representation of non-European history. In contrast to historical atlases of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they did not consist primarily of maps that portrayed changing territorial boundaries, but used a variety of different media to give a much more varied picture of history. The traditional Christian view of universal history was reassessed, but the break with tradition did not yet result in a new orthodoxy. Therefore, the representation of non-European history varied: Some authors stuck to a basically unchanged Eurocentric view, others put more emphasis on the history of Asian empires, but African and American history were mostly neglected.
